Two funerals begin a sad procession in Connecticut

NEWTOWN, Conn. Opening a long and almost unbearable procession of grief, Newtown began burying its dead Monday, laying to rest two 6-year-old boys – Jack Pinto, who was crazy about the New York Giants, and Noah Pozner, whose twin sister survived the rampage.

“If Noah had not been taken from us, he would have become a great man. He would have been a wonderful husband and a loving father,” Noah's uncle, Alexis Haller, told mourners in Fairfield, about 25 miles south of Newtown, according to remarks he provided to The Associated Press. Both services were closed to the news media.

Noah's twin, Arielle, who was assigned to a different classroom, survived the killing frenzy by 20-year-old Adam Lanza, an attack so horrifying that authorities could not say three days later whether the school would ever reopen.

The Newtown area will face many more funerals over the next few days, just as other places are getting ready for the holidays.

Beyond Newtown, parents nervously sent their children back to class in a country deeply shaken by the attack, and in a measure of how the tragedy has put people on edge, schools were locked down in at least four places.

As investigators worked to figure out what drove Lanza to lash out with such fury – and why he singled out the school – federal agents said he had fired guns at shooting ranges over the past several years but that there was no evidence he did so recently as practice for the rampage.

At Jack's service on Monday, Luke Wellman, 10, remembered a boy who loved football and wrestling and worshipped Victor Cruz, the star wide receiver for the Giants. Cruz played in Sunday's game with “Jack Pinto ‘My Hero' ” written on one of his cleats.

Luke said: “I'm here to support my teammate and friend.”

The funeral program bore a quotation from the Book of Revelation: “God shall wipe away all tears. There shall be no more death. Neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain.”

At Noah's funeral, his uncle described a smart, funny and mischievous child who loved animals and Mario Brothers video games and liked to joke that he worked in a taco factory.

“It is unspeakably tragic that none of us can bring Noah back,” Haller said. “We would go to the ends of the earth to do so, but none of us can. What we can do is carry Noah within us, always. We can remember the joy he brought to us. We can hold his memory close to our hearts. We can treasure him forever.”

At both funeral homes, as around the country, people wrestled with what steps could and should be taken to prevent something like the massacre from happening again.

“If people want to go hunting, a single-shot rifle does the job, and that does the job to protect your home, too. If you need more than that, I don't know what to say,” Ray DiStephan said outside Noah's funeral.

He added: “I don't want to see my kids go to schools that become maximum-security fortresses. That's not the world I want to live in, and that's not the world I want to raise them in.”

Authorities say Lanza shot his mother, Nancy, at their home and then took her car and some of her guns to the school, where he broke in and opened fire. A Connecticut official said the mother, a gun enthusiast who practiced at shooting ranges, was found dead in her pajamas in bed, shot four times in the head with a .22-caliber rifle.

Lanza was wearing all black, with an olive-drab utility vest with lots of pockets, during the attack.

Investigators have found no letters or diaries that could explain the rampage.

Debora Seifert, a spokeswoman for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said both Lanza and his mother fired at shooting ranges and also visited ranges together. “We do not have any indication at this time that the shooter engaged in shooting activities in the past six months,” Seifert told the AP.

In Newtown, classes were canceled Monday, and the town's other schools were to reopen today. The district made plans to send surviving Sandy Hook students to a former middle school in the neighboring town of Monroe.

“These are innocent children that need to be put on the right path again,” Monroe police Lt. Brian McCauley said.

Investigation

Investigators have not managed to retrieve any data from a computer they took from the house where the gunman in the school shootings lived with his mother because he had all but destroyed the hard drive, a senior law enforcement official said Monday.

“It looked like he took steps to damage it – he smashed it,” said the official. The official said it did not appear that Lanza had left any letters or notes that would offer a motive for the killings, or explain why he had targeted the school.

Also, a source told Hearst Connecticut Newspapers that investigators seized cellphones, computers and computer games during a search of Lanza's home but found no evidence that he was being treated with any drugs prescribed for mental illness.

Investigators are using search warrants to get medical records, the source said.

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